A double whammy tonight as both our task and run leader had to be substituted at the very last minute.

Our trainer Gary was unwell so he was unable to join us for his penultimate Bristol run. (There were some rumours that he just needed the extra time to put the finishing touches to his fancy dress costume for his farewell session next week).

Not only that, but our original task had been canceled! Fortunately, the emergency red GG Bristol phone had rung just hours earlier with an urgent request for help down at the Malago Greenway Berry Maze. The project (which we visited just last weekend) had run into difficulties after ploughing had revealed a veritable mine field of rubble that was sure to take out the rotivator when it arrived later in the week and put paid to the Mock A Maze day planned this Saturday.

Naturally we jumped at the chance to help out - our members love nothing more than to help a project in need - so we headed out along the Malago Greenway and got stuck in moving as many rocks as possible out of the soil and into a pile. Meanwhile Tom, Ian, Alex, Andrew and Richard were on wheelbarrow and refuse sack duty moving the pile into a location for collection by a skip.

Everyone worked hard collecting up rubble and rubbish. As is often the case we made some interesting discoveries - a shoe, an old orangina bottle and indeed it appeared that on this occasion that we had discovered an ancient car burial site as first Liam uncovered a tyre and then Rachel located a steering wheel in amongst all the dirt.

By the time we were due to leave we had uncovered most of the rocks so Mock a Maze should be able to go ahead!

Thanks everyone for adapting so willingly to the changed plan. Raluca was really grateful for our help and this was one of those occasions when it's difficult to see who else could have done all that manual labour at such short notice. You all rock!

Our work finished, we returned to base and then headed off to our monthly eats. A really great turnout at the meal tonight (as you can see on the selfie!) - lovely to have you all along both at the task and at the restaurant afterwards!

Thanks to Dave for leading the second group and to my back markers Alex and Clo. Thanks also to Caroline, Richard and Jack for the glove run!

Welcome also to new runners Emma and Richard

Don't forget it's (optional) fancy dress next week for Gary's last run. No theme, the more random the better!